Amazon has crossed 3.000 billion dollars of market capitalisation. The milestone lands in a global equity market that has narrowed around three facts: American multinationals dominate almost completely, technology has displaced the traditional economy at the top, and spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure now moves valuations more than anything else on the balance sheet.
According to CompaniesMarketCap, eight of the ten most valuable listed companies in the world are American. The only entry from the Middle East is the Saudi state oil group Saudi Aramco in eighth. Asia holds a place at the top only through the chipmaker Tsmc in sixth. Where the list was once held by industrial conglomerates and investment banks, market power now sits with chips, cloud computing and algorithms. What fuelled the recent moves was the second quarter reporting season, which showed the same pattern almost everywhere: capital spending on generative artificial intelligence infrastructure is growing at a startling rate, and it is starting to produce real money, above all in enterprise cloud.
Nvidia, 5.133 billion dollars. The company run by co founder and chief executive Jensen Huang sits at the top, carried by demand for its Hopper and Blackwell architectures from the largest technology buyers and by a record quarter that beat analyst estimates.
Alphabet, 4.590 billion. Second, with co founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin permanent fixtures near the top of the Forbes billionaires list. Under chief executive Sundar Pichai, revenue has accelerated on the integration of Gemini into search and the expansion of Google Cloud.
Apple, 4.515 billion. Tim Cook's company holds third despite a difficult session. Its latest quarter set a revenue record of 109,42 billion dollars, driven by the iPhone and by 30,74 billion from Services, and the shares still fell more than 7 percent on the day because the guidance disappointed.
Microsoft, 3.659 billion. Historically tied to co founder Bill Gates and now run by Satya Nadella, the group has committed a large share of its cash to capital spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, on the strength of the OpenAI alliance and the integration of Copilot into Azure.
Amazon, 2.992 billion, and above 3.000 billion in recent sessions. Jeff Bezos's company passed the threshold for the first time after chief executive Andy Jassy presented a quarter carried by record performance at Aws, up 37 percent.
Tsmc, 2.163 billion. Founded by Morris Chang and led by chief executive C.C. Wei, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company makes almost all of the advanced chips used by Nvidia, Apple and Broadcom. Its latest quarter set a revenue record above 40 billion dollars, up 33,7 percent, on demand from data centres and generative artificial intelligence.
Broadcom, 1.989 billion. Run by the billionaire chief executive Hock Tan, it builds networking infrastructure and custom application specific chips for artificial intelligence. Its shares rose more than 6 percent in the latest session.
Saudi Aramco, 1.716 billion. The only representative of the traditional energy sector in the top ten. Majority controlled by the Saudi state and the Pif fund chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with Amin H. Nasser as chief executive, it reported second quarter net profit of 32,7 billion dollars and a quarterly dividend of 21,9 billion.
SpaceX, 1.651 billion. Founded and run by Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, and carried by Starlink revenue and the Starship programme. Its listing made Musk the first trillionaire, and the shares have since fallen hard, at points below the offer price. Its first quarterly report as a listed company produced convincing numbers that did not convince the market, with the stock down about 11 percent in pre market trading on worries about margins against high and rising capital spending.
Meta Platforms, 1.497 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, with an estimated fortune of 201 billion dollars, is now the fifth richest person in the world. The latest quarter showed a strong recovery in advertising revenue and success for the artificial intelligence infrastructure built into Instagram and WhatsApp, though it is the group's new cloud business that investors are watching next.